Maintenance and operational organizations often operate a number of related systems that utilize similar components. Maintenance of these systems often includes replacing components that wear out during normal operations. These components can be replaced with new components or with components that were previously removed from one system and refurbished for reuse.
Maintaining these systems is often efficiently performed by stopping at least some of the operations of a system so that maintenance operations can be performed. In an example, a public electric utility operates and maintains several electrical generating plants that are required to have maintenance performed according to defined schedules. Some maintenance activities for these plants are performed while the plant is shut down and not producing electricity to its full capacity or even at all, a condition referred to as an “outage.” Scheduling the maintenance of these plants includes ensuring that a sufficient number of other plants are operating during a scheduled outage of one plant to meet the electrical demands of the utility while the plant being maintained is in its outage.
In the example of an electric utility, the electric utility may operate a number of power generation plants that include similar equipment that are able to use the same models of wearable components. For example, a number of different power generation plant locations may use gas powered turbines that are manufactured by the same manufacturer or that use the interchangeable wearable components. These different power generation plants sometimes use the same wearable component or wearable components that are sufficiently similar so as to be interchangeable. In an example, such interchangeable parts are referred to as parts that are “pooled.” In some scenarios, a wearable component that is removed from one plant is able to be refurbished and that refurbished part is able to be installed into another plant that uses that wearable component.